Nina

Graveface;
2013

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Cover albums should at this point come with low expectations. You think of things like filling contracts, overcoming writers block, maybe doing a favor for an old friend. And Sometimes you get a couple of decent songs out of it. But hearing that Xiu Xiu would be covering songs identified with Nina Simone on a new release, it was hard not get excited. There’s an obvious spiritual connection between the artists, a sense of fearlessness and deep belief in the transformative power of expressing raw emotion. Looking at the titles, I could close my eyes and almost hear how some of these songs would play out. Sure, it would be a challenge. Nina Simone is giant, an artist of great complexity whose music is hard to grapple with and harder still to summarize, so there would be the question of which Nina Simone to cover: the jazz belter, the ethereal balladeer, the bold activist, the shattered lover, the gifted interpreter of the American songbook. But you could imagine Jamie Stewart finding a way to channel his frayed edges and matchless intensity into something powerful that would highlight something about Simone’s many-faceted approach.

Alas, it was not to be. Nina is a low-key release that is not "the new Xiu Xiu album" but it’s still hard not to be disappointed at this wasted opportunity. If it were too abrasive or too faithful, that would be one thing, but Nina is guilty of an even deeper sin: These interpretations shed no light on Simone’s artistry and add nothing to the force of these songs. The strangest thing of all is that the failure is due almost entirely to Stewart’s vocal conception. He doesn’t have the widest range as a singer, but he has found ways to circumvent his limitations and find modes of expression to suit his songs. And he also has a deep bag of effects—shrieks, cries, howls, and even an engaging croon that hints at blackest goth and the androgyny of new pop. But for whatever reason he chose to sing these 11 songs almost entirely with a pinched, trembling whisper that makes melody irrelevant while not offering any compensatory emotional gestures. It’s a deeply theatrical register, sounding put-on and "artificial" in a way that has to be intentional, but it never signifies. You keep waiting for the songs to lurch in an unexpected direction but they never do; Nina is a low simmer that never comes close to approaching a boil.

There are a few things to recommend here. One, Stewart’s song selection is pretty good, even if he never finds a way to do much with them."Wild Is the Wind" and "The Other Woman" are brilliant tunes that Simone owned, and her versions of "Don’t Explain" and "Pirate Jenny" are essential versions of frequently covered classics. So just hearing the songs he chose—most of which, incidentally, Simone did not write—and trying to hear how he connects them to her interpretations and tweaks lyrics here and there to personalize them holds some parlor game interest. And the arrangements by drummer Ches Smith are distinctive and varied, moving between music-box twinkle, Tom Waits-style junkyard jazz, and harsh atonal bleats. There's an interesting sound here, a shell of an idea. But there is ultimately very little melody or personality for the arrangements to support and the record winds up sounding weirdly conservative.